Zar­dari warns against sys­tem­atic women as­sault

ISLAMABAD—Co-chair­man of Pak­istan Peo­ple’s Party (PPP) and for­mer Pres­i­dent Asif Ali Zar­dari while warn­ing the masses against ‘a sys­tem­atic as­sault’ on women rights in the coun­try has asked them to fight the said mind-set.

Asif Zar­dari in a mes­sage on the eve of the 63rd birth­day of Be­nazir Bhutto to be ob­served on Tues­day said: “On this birth­day of the Mus­lim World’s first di­rectly elected woman Prime Min­is­ter it is wor­ry­ing that, in the name of re­li­gion, ob­scu­ran­tist el­e­ments are in­creas­ingly sup­press­ing women- some even call­ing for vi­o­lence against them.”

He said that we con­demn and re­ject such de­cla- ra­tions by semi lit­er­ate and ob­scu­ran­tist male chau­vin­ists in the name of re­li­gion. We also con­demn and re­ject the hys­ter­i­cal anti women noises in­creas­ingly be­ing made by these el­e­ments, he said adding that the party vows to fight big­ots and ob­scu­ran­tist to the fin­ish.

Zar­dari also asked peo­ple to fol­low Be­nazir Bhutto in stand­ing up to mil­i­tants and ex­trem­ists and not al­low them foist their ide­ol­ogy through brute force. “At the same time we must also pro­tect and de­fend demo­cratic in­sti­tu­tions and con­sti­tu­tion­al­ism,” he said. “We also re­it­er­ate our pledge to ex­tri­cate the poor from ab­ject poverty and degra­da­tion.”—Agen­cies